For a variety of therapeutic applications, several treatment modalities are currently known in the art including electrical stimulation, heat therapy and thermostimulation.
Electrical stimulation involves the application of an electrical current to a single muscle or a group of muscles through one or more stimulation pads that are temporarily attached to the skin. The resulting muscle contraction can produce a variety of effects from strengthening injured muscles and reducing edema to relieving pain and promoting healing. The pads are usually quite small and typically powered with a battery. This results in the application of a small amount of power and a low treatment depth of the resulting electric field. The shallow depth of the electric field generated by conventional electrical stimulation systems limits performance and patient benefit. Some systems have attempted to address this limitation by applying more current, often from a line or mains supply source. However, the small size of conventional electrical stimulation pads is such that on the application of larger amounts of power, i.e. the use of higher currents, patients often report the experience of pain or discomfort.
Heat therapy itself is very useful as it has a number of effects such as relaxation of muscle spasm and increased blood flow that promotes healing. However, combination therapy, i.e. the synergistic use of other modalities such as massage, ultrasound and/or electrical stimulation has been found to be more effective than heat therapy alone.
Thermostimulation is one such combination therapy that involves the use of heat therapy and electrical stimulation simultaneously. With thermostimulation, the healing benefits of heat are provided along with the strengthening, toning, pain relieving and healing benefits of electrical stimulation. Moreover, the application of heat has been found effective in that it allows the patient to tolerate higher currents. This yields higher electric field strengths, greater depths of penetration and, therefore, more positive results than could be achieved with electrical stimulation without heat.
Many known electrical stimulation systems have two to four channels and therefore allow only one or two pads to be applied to a patient. The usefulness of such systems is limited by the small number of channels, which prevents electrical stimulation being applied to more than two regions of the body at once, and thereby prolongs the time taken for treatment if numerous regions of the body need to be treated. A further disadvantage of these known electrical stimulation systems is that all of the pads are controlled by a common controller, which generates electrical pulses for all of the pads and determines the amplitude and duration of each electrical pulse. A user has little or no control over the pulses that are generated and, indeed, it is often not possible for a user to know the properties of the pulses without using an oscilloscope. Yet another disadvantage of these known electrical stimulation systems is that they are limited in the number of treatment modalities that they can apply. For example, some systems can only apply electrical stimulation, whilst other systems can apply only thermostimulation.
An improved thermostimulation apparatus is disclosed by the Applicant's earlier patent application, International Patent Application No. PCT/GB10/002132, filed on 18 Nov. 2010 and entitled “Thermostimulation System Including Multilayer Pads with Integrated Temperature Regulation”, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. This apparatus has a console for providing electrical currents for thermal and electrical stimulation in response to a first input from an operator via at least one electrical connector. An inline control system is coupled to the electrical connector for regulating the currents in response to a second input from an operator and a temperature feedback signal via a second electrical connector. A thermostimulation pad is coupled to the inline control system via the second electrical connector. A plurality of inline control systems and thermostimulation pads can be connected to the console and, in this case, each inline control system is independent of the other inline control systems. Thus, it is not possible to coordinate the times at which each thermostimulation pad generates an electrical pulse.